As if in
utter defiance of the decency and order recommended by the clergy,
popular exhibitions of all sorts were set up on the broad flagstones of
the great space before the church. Street dancing-girls exercised at
every available spot those 'gliding gyrations' so eloquently condemned
by the worthy Ammianus Marcellinus of orderly and historical memory.
Booths crammed with relics of doubtful authenticity, baskets filled with
neat manuscript abstracts of furiously controversial pamphlets, pagan
images regenerated into portraits of saints, pictorial representations
of Arians writhing in damnation, and martyrs basking in haloes of
celestial light, tempted, in every direction, the more pious among the
spectators. Cooks perambulated with their shops on their backs; rival
slave-merchants shouted petitions for patronage; wine-sellers taught
Bacchanalian philosophy from the tops of their casks; poets recited
compositions for sale; sophisters held arguments destined to convert
the wavering and perplex the ignorant.
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